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Glottal stop

Prosody
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A brief interruption of sound produced by momentarily closing the vocal cords

Detailed Definition
The glottal stop is represented by an apostrophe (') and occurs when the vocal cords snap shut and open again, creating an abrupt break in phonation, as in the Cockney pronunciation of "bottle" or Hawaiian "aloha." In poetry, especially performance verse and dramatic monologue, glottal stops mark moments of emphasis, hesitation, or emotional intensity, affecting both rhythm and emotional coloration of the work.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the abrupt line breaks often imply a glottal stop, as in “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –”; In Hughes’s “The Weary Blues,” the line “He did a lazy sway… / He did a lazy sway…” uses glottal stops between repetitions for rhythmic emphasis; In Scottish poetry like Burns’s “To a Mouse,” dialectal pronunciation often includes glottal stops, e.g., “’Tis thine ain dear bought right”; In modern spoken-word poetry, such as in pieces by Sarah Kay, glottal stops punctuate emotional pauses; In Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” the command “Stop all the clocks” may be performed with a glottal stop before “all” for dramatic effect; In Heaney’s “Digging,” the clipped delivery of “Nicking and slicing neatly” can include glottal stops to mimic the sound of spade hitting earth.
Additional Notes
A glottal stop is a consonantal sound produced by briefly closing the vocal cords, stopping airflow in the throat (represented as [ʔ] in IPA), as heard in the middle of "uh-oh" or in some pronunciations of "button" (with a stop instead of a /t/). In prosody, glottal stops can function as syllable boundaries or even substitute for missing consonants, subtly affecting rhythm and enjambment. Though not typically marked in English orthography, they influence scansion in dialect poetry or when analyzing speech-based metrics. In some poetic traditions (e.g., Arabic or Hawaiian), the glottal stop is phonemic and must be accounted for in meter.
Also Known As
glottal plosive [ʔ]
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